Review: Lenovo's ThinkStation P900 Screams Performance

When Lenovo introduced its latest high-performance workstation to a small group of tech reporters last July, it looked like something pretty special. After sampling the workstation, we can report that everything about the ThinkStation P900 screams performance. The dual-Xeon system is massively scalable and serviceable completely without tools, giving Lenovo partners a powerful option for customers running applications for video production, rendering and special effects; CAD/CAE; oil and gas exploration; genealogy and pharmaceutical research; and others requiring computing power of the highest order and short-as-possible downtimes. Even the motherboard can be replaced in minutes with nary a screwdriver in sight. A starting list around $1,800 includes Windows, a Nvidia graphics adapter and a three-year warranty.

One of a trio of workstations added to its ThinkStation P Series at Siggraph 2014, the high-end P900 bookends with the entry-level P300 system, which kicked off the series in May. Remarkably, the P900 from its roughly 8 x 8-inch front panel looks much like an average mini-tower. But at more than 2 feet long, it's far deeper than most. How else would this gangly box have room to park 512 GB of DDR4 RAM in 16 DIMM slots, 10 expansion slots and as many as 11 internal, slot-based and externally accessible drives? There are eight USB 3.0 ports (including four lighted ports up front), four rear-mounted USB 2.0 ports, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The P900 comes with a 1,300-watt power supply that can power the dual-socket system and its drives plus as many as four discrete GPUs.

Test results were impressive. While not the fastest workstation we've ever tested, Lenovo's workstation lands squarely in third place on CRN's Top 10 Fastest Desktops along with three other systems from Lenovo. The tested unit was equipped with two Intel Xeon E5-2687W eight-core, 16-thread processors running Windows 7 Professional SP1 at 3.1GHz. The first benchmark we ran was Geekbench 2.4, which delivered that third-place high score of 33,115.

Next came tests using IOmeter, which simulated large-, small- and mixed-packet traffic on one and both of its network interfaces from one, three and five simulated workers. With small (512-byte) packets, the system delivered a maximum sustained transaction rate of 205.4K I/Os per second (IOps) while transferring about 100 MBps of data. Its maximum sustained data transfer rate of 608 MBps came when transmitting 32K packets from five simulated clients on one NIC and three on another. In mixed-packet tests, the unit peaked at 27.5K IOps for transaction and 352 MBps for data transfer rates with one worker on each NIC.

Moving on to the physical, a lockable lever opens rearward and slides the system's left panel rearward to release it from its hooks top and bottom. This exposes Lenovo's so-called tri-channel cooling system, which uses plastic ducts to segregate air flowing from the unit's front to its rear in compartments for the power supply and PCIe and flex slots topside, CPUs and memory amidship, and the graphics controller and additional PCIe slots in the cargo hold. Each chamber has a dedicated modular fan that blind-connects directly to the motherboard.

Among the system's many innovations is the Flex connector, which lets Lenovo solution providers tailor the P900 for a variety of specialized customer I/O requirements. For example, a mezzanine connector system permits card-based deployment of high-speed SATA, SAS or PCIe storage without using up any PCIe slots. Lenovo also employs flexible drive trays. Thanks to a clever arrangement of pins and grommets, Lenovo's so-called flex trays each can accept either two 2.5-inch internal SAS or SATA SDDs or HDDs or one 3.5-inch drive and one 2.5-inch drive. These blind-connect to custom boards that attach to the motherboard's storage bus and help speed service by "hard-wiring" storage power and data cables.

For its strong performance, fast and easy service and flexible customization options, the CRN Test Center recommends the Lenovo ThinkStation P900.

PUBLISHED FEB. 19, 2015